Thursday, 23rd January
Anse Chastanet
Today was our only excursion outside the hotel. After enjoying our usual buffet breakfast (more elaborate options are available), we assembled outside the Treehouse restaurant at 9:00 AM for a trip to the 'Drive-in' volcano, Diamond Falls Botanical Gardens and Mineral Baths, and Emerald Estate.
We began our trip with an extremely bumpy 2km drive to Soufriere. After that, more decent roads took us to our first stop, the 'drive-in' volcano. The 'drive-in' aspect refers to the fact that an extensive area, about 5km in diameter, is actually the caldera of an extinct volcano. However, one part of the caldera is an active geothermal site with boiling mud pools and a strong smell of hydrogen sulphide.
As an aside, we learned that the Pitons are not volcanoes, despite their profiles. They are magma plugs that never actually erupted.
Our next stop was the Diamond Falls Botanical Gardens and Mineral Baths. Jo had come prepared for the mineral baths, but I decided the health benefits of getting wet were overrated! The gardens were interesting, even for a non-botanist, and the waterfall was very pretty.
Our last stop was at the Emerald Estate. This is owned and operated by the hotel and is the source of most, if not all, the fruit and vegetables served by the hotel. It also grows all the cocoa for the hotel's chocolate operations. And last, but not least, the Estate now has a micro-brewery where we we given samples of a couple of beers. I was a little surprised to hear that the strongest beer is 9.9%.
The most embarrassing aspect of this trip was that the guides at volcano and gardens were not paid by those 'attractions' but relied on tips from tourists like us. The guide at the estate would have been paid for his gardening work, but would also have appreciated a tip. Of course, I hadn't even thought of this before the excursion and had come with no money whatsoever! To try to make amends I quickly rushed to our room on our return and then back down to the tour driver and gave him EC$200 and asked him to keep EC$50 and distribute the rest equally to the other guides. I trust he did so.
Afternoon on Anse Mamin, lunch of Prosecco and gazpacho for me, Prosecco and banana cake for Jo. (OK, I had banana cake as well.)
Just before leaving the beach we saw the ship in the photo below. Using the Marine Traffic app we identified it as 'Amdromeda', described as a luxury expedition yacht, although it looked more military than luxury!
When we arrived at the hotel we had been shown some 'lime syrup' in our fridge and miniature bottles of rum on the 'coffee' table. We decided that we ought to put these to good use and made our own 'rum punch' before dinner. Despite being about 5 days old the lime syrup made a very refreshing drink...